Veronesi, Alberto

“It’s good to hear the Orchestra and Chorus of the Roman Academia Sancta Cecilia . . . The orchestra still has the luscious Puccini-sound and is conducted by Alberto Veronesi who doesn’t over sentimentalize the score but still brings out the glowing melodies clearly and incisively. Orchestra and chorus are splendid in the famous funeral music . . .”

Opera Today, US November 2006

Alberto Veronesi was born in 1967 in Milan, where he studied at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, graduating with honours in piano, composition and orchestral conducting. While still a student he began conducting concerts of contemporary music.

1992

Veronesi founds the Guido Cantelli Orchestra (until 2000), the resident sym¬phony orchestra of Milan’s Verdi Conservatory and becomes its artistic and music director; his principal focus with the orchestra is on Beethoven, Berg, Brahms and Mendelssohn

1996

At Claudio Abbado’s invitation he makes his Salzburg Easter Festival debut with the Guido Cantelli Orchestra

1998

Makes his opera debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 1998 Spring Festival in New York conducting Salieri’s Falstaff

1999

Debut at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala; appointed music director of the Puccini Festival Foundation, Torre del Lago, where he has now conducted all the composer’s operas. His efforts have also contributed to the construction of a new opera house dedicated to performing Puccini’s operatic works.

2000

Debut at Florence’s Maggio Musicale

2001

Appointed artistic and music director of the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana in Palermo, with which he is performing the complete cycles of symphonies by Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler and Shostakovich, as well as giving prominence to 20th-century Italian symphonic music and developing a programme devoted to contemporary works

His production of La Bohème at the Puccini Festival wins the Premio Abbiati awarded by the Italian Music Critics Association

2004

Conducts Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the NHK in Tokyo

2005

Conducts Madama Butterfly in Athens

2006

Conducts Tosca at the Puccini Festival. His association with Deutsche Grammophon begins this year with the release of Puccini’s early opera Edgar, featuring the Orchestra and Chorus of Santa Cecilia and Plácido Domingo in the title role. Veronesi receives the European Prize “Lorenzo il Magnifico” from the Accademia Internazionale Medicea of Florence

2007

Conducts Leoncavallo’s I Medici at the Puccini Festival in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer

2009

New Album: Abandoned Arias – forgotten or rarely performed arias by Puccini, sung by Plácido Domingo and Violeta Urmana together with the Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Veronesi; for 2010 the
release of La Nuit de mai is planned – a selection of opera areas and songs by Leoncavallo, sung by Plácido Domingo and accompanied by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna led by Veronesi